My mother recently turned 76. In 1990, she suffered a small heart attack. The heart muscle only suffered very minor damage during that attack. She suffers from what her doctor calls Syndrome X. Following that heart attack, depression set in, her eating habits became horrible, she refused to exercise, and her blood pressure and cholosterol were already elevated continued to stay elevated. She was also later diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.

In 2001 due to a cancer misdiagnosis, she had a kidney removed. The kidney was not cancerous. Unfortunately, the remaining kidney had less than 10% function. For years she was able to maintain with Procrit to keep her hematocrit levels up.

In 2005 she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and had a pace maker put in. Her health was otherwise relatively stable, until May of 2008.
In May of 2008 she was hospitalized due to severe shortness of breath. She'd quit smoking in 1990 following her initial heart problems, and her chest x-rays were always clear. In May it was determined that she need to have her aortic valve replaced and the surgery was scheduled for June 2, 2008.
My mother underwent the initial surgery successfully. However, her post-operative course has been nothing short of disasterous.
The surgery, as anticipated, damaged her remaining kidney, so that it has no function and she now has to undergo dialysis 3 times per week.
One week post-operatively she suffered from something called ICU Psychosis where she had a complete mental breakdown. The paranoia and flights of fancy were overwhelming and have been continually devastating. She no longer knows really who she is, where she's lived for the last 50 years, who her family members are, sadly the true, real memories are gone. They've been replaced with fanciful dreams of trips to India, people she's never known and at one point, she even threatened to kill me, her only daughter.
At week 2 she was placed on the general floor, where her health continued to go downhill. The wire holding her ribs together had become loose, the surgeon had to go back in and fix that, and at the same time placed a wound vac in her chest, which remained in place for 4 weeks, because the incision site was infected. At week 3 they placed her back in the ICU where her health continued to deterioriate.
Between weeks 3 and 16 in the ICU, not only did she go into septic shock, but she came down with a fungal infection in her blood, her blood pressure bottomed out too many times to count, her heart quit working altogether on several occasions, she was over-dialysised on numerous occasions, her lungs repeatedly filled with fluid, to the point where a drain was placed. Her chest was reopened numerous times for continuing problems with the aortic valve replacement surgery. She also underwent hundreds of x-rays of her lungs, stomach, heart, all for of ongoing problems post-operatively.
In August, in spite of and against the wishes set forth in her Advance Directive and Living Will, she was placed on a trach ventilator and a feeding tube. Sometime between August and October she was also placed on another wound vac, this time on her back for a decubitus ulcer. The paranoia and dementia continue unabated.
On October 2, 2008, despite how poorly she was doing medically, because she had exhausted all her Medicare benefits, she was transferred out of the hospital, to a long term care facility. She was placed into a facility, that it's hard to imagine how they maintain their Joint Commission Accreditation and Gold Star Provider status.
This facility allegedly has expertise in getting patients weaned from ventilators. It's now November 22, 2008 and she's still on the ventilator.
In mid-October they had to remove the feeding tube and dialysis ports because once again my mother had come down with an infection and they couldn't determine the source. She was placed on a naso-gastric tube and almost bled out on the day they removed the dialysis ports.
Because she is essentially non-mobile and the staffing is so poor, she is relegated for hours to lay in her own waste; there are no bed alarms, she has been found sliding out of bed, and call buttons go ignored for hours at a time, along with patient and family requests for help.
On November 17, 2008, we were once again advised that the Medicare benefits available for long term care were exhausted and that she was being transferred to another facility, this time out-of-state, as there are no facilities in Florida that can handle this type of patient.
My mother's secondary insurance, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, that she has paid for every month for the last 24 years as a Federal Employee Retiree, has authorized an additional 14 days at the facility before she is transferred out.
My mother is now ventilator dependent, on a feeding tube, still on the wound vac, needs dialysis every 3 days, is incontinent of bladder and bowel, and the paranoia and dementia only get worse.
Prior to her surgery, while she was somewhat forgetful, but who isn't at 75-76, she was an avid -book a day reader, and worked several crossword puzzles daily. While physically she wasn't in good shape, her mind was still very active with no dementia or parnoia.
The insurance industry has dicatated the health care that will be provided and for how long and the hospitals and physicians only care about getting paid, and once they don't get paid, they dump the patients.
My hope and wish, as this point, is that by the grace of her higher power, that mother be allowed to die. It won't be with any dignity, we treat our animals better, but at least she would be out of her misery.
My mother's story doesn't have a good outcome and it will only get worse from here.